links
Links to interesting computer science/math stuff, for when you're bored, but don't want to feel like you're wasting your time!
Moser’s Entropy compression argument: Terry Tao has a really good blog post explaining Moser’s constructive algorithm for the Lovasz Local Lemma.
Existence of a prime between n, 2n: Also known as the Bertrand–Chebyshev theorem, this fact is often invoked when we want to work with finite fields which are just slightly larger than n. Erdös gave an elementary proof for this in 1932.
Ronen’s talk on Yuansi Chen’s surprising breakthrough: In this video, Ronen Eldan gives a great overview of the history behind the KLS conjecture.
The Biggest Number that there is: Scott’s classic blog post, on writing down the biggest number possible on a piece of card, and how computability theory provides an interesting answer.
Gaps between primes: Another classic, this one’s a video by Terry Tao, on the history to properly understand gaps (both small and large) in the set of primes.
Natural Proofs Barrier: Check out Gowers’ post for an excellent informal introduction to the natural proofs barrier.
Reflections on Trusting Trust: Ken Thompson’s Turing award acceptance speech, where he talks about how it is possible to produce bugged compiler binaries (which pass all source code verification checks) that deliberately ‘self-perputuate’ the bugs within them.
Intro to HDXs: Ryan O’Donnell’s video gives a nice introduction to High Dimensional Expanders.
On the Nature of Mathematical Proofs: Andrew Granville in this paper goes in to what is accepted to be the definition of a mathematical proof and how it has evolved over the centuries.
Michel Talagrand’s (short) Autobiography: This biography (just over 20 pages) contains lots of entertaining anecdotes and also a few bits of useful advice for research in math.